Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Victim?

Don't get me wrong, the suspect who was shot was definitely sleazy. He was with a 16 year old girl.

But he was shot dead. That's not the punishment for kidnapping. Was this girl REALLY kidnapped? Why did she not try to get away when in public? Why did her kidnapper feel comfortable bringing his "kidnapping" victim into a VERY public place? She could ask to go to the bathroom and then just run away crying for help!! Was he REALLY that stupid.

And I'm sorry, but I just don't think the guy had enough time to "mentally abuse her" so that she was too scared to run away. Further, she was not, according to what I have read, "bruised, battered, trembling," or anything of the sort that would suggest she was being abused and held against her will.

So far as I can tell, she merely got into an internet-based relationship with an older man and went to meet him. She seems to be just a 16 year old girl who wanted some attention. WE NEED HARD EVIDENCE for more than that!

Further, a HIGHLY-ARMED military-style SWAT team surrounded and shot the guy.

AHEM; that's pretty heavy-handed. Was he armed? Was there a shootout!?!?! NO ONE KNOWS! The "authorities" have said nothing!

AND NO ONE IS ASKING ANY QUESTIONS BUT THE MAN IN THE VIDEO BELOW.

When questions are not being asked, state-sponsored murder may be the result.

Monday, August 12, 2013

A conspiracy "theory" is an idea with little basis in fact. Its just all conjecture based on a highly questionable premise.

The argument about Obama hoarding ammo isn't an argument at all! The Dept. of "Homeland Security," (who should BLUSH given how gestapo-like that name sounds) - and not the FBI, CIA, or any Dept. of Defense agency - is buying 1.6 BILLION with a 'B' rounds of ammunition. BULLETS.

THEY HAVE NEVER BOUGHT AN AMOUNT EVEN 1/10 OF THAT NUMBER.

These are not petunias they are buying, kids. THEY ARE BULLETS. BULLETS GO IN GUNS FOR THE PURPOSE OF BEING SHOT OUT OF GUNS, usually at targets or else at people.

Sooooo...... anyone who asks WHY this agency with a name reminiscent of the Stazi in East Germany, is suddenly buying billions of rounds of ammo is suddenly a "conspiracy theorist?"

No.

At a bare minimum, EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN should demand an immediate Congressional investigation into this unwarranted expenditure. We have a Federal budget crisis going on and the DHS is blowing over 1 Billion dollars on ammo!?!?!?!

W-H-Y!?!?!?

And the press is printing "articles" like the one below, which is an article about the "conspiracy" theory ITSELF causing "real trouble" (as opposed to the fake kind of trouble?).

People asking questions are the story here, according to the author. Um, ok. GEE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE ASKING THE GOV'T THE SAME QUESTIONS, MS. WYLER!?!?!?!?

Governments are supposed to represent their citizens. The government agency fighting no wars is going to do WHAT on behalf of its citizens with 1.6 billion rounds of ammo?!?!?!?

The Conspiracy Theory About Obama Hoarding Ammo Is Causing Real Trouble

By Grace Wyler

The Infowars folks aren't taking government ammo hoarding lightly.

Last month, conservative blogger Matt Drudge tweeted that he predicts 2013 will be the "year of Alex Jones," the conspiracy theorist extraordinaire who most recently made headlines by suggesting that the Boston Marathon bombings were a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the FBI.

Drudge has a point. As the leading purveyor of New World Order conspiracies, Jones has a growing Internet following of casual fearmongers who see nefarious government intrigue in the most mundane bureaucratic chores (e.g. water fluoridation), and believe it's only a matter of time before we are all living in FEMA concentration camps.

To the average person, this looks like lunacy. But is it all just conspiratorial blather? Or is there any truth to what Alex Jones and his fanboys are selling?

Mostly, the ideas are just nuts. But the most recent conspiracy theory du jour—that the government is stockpiling ammunition for an eventual showdown with the American people—has been surprisingly resilient.

The theory first began circulating last year, when the Infowars crowd noticed that the Department of Homeland Security had put in a procurement request for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition—a surprisingly large number of bullets, even by a normal person's estimation.

DHS has tried to quell the rumor-mongering, assuring Congress that the bullets are primarily used for training purposes. A DHS spokesman told Republican House investigators last month that the department wasn't actually planning on buying all 1.6 billion bullets, and that the ammo would be spread over 70,000 agents over five years. In aletter to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) last November, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that DHS plans to buy around $37 million worth of ammo in 2013, which, based on past year’s expenses, would amount to around 100 million rounds. She also pointed out that the department has actually marginally decreased its ammunitions purchases over the last few years.

AS BULLETS FLY OFF THE SHELVES, ALEX JONES HAS WARNED HIS AUDIENCE THAT THE AMMO SHORTAGE IS A SIGN THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS GEARING UP FOR WIDESPREAD CIVIC UNREST.

Still, that does seem like a lot of ammo for a non-defense agency. In 2012, DHS purchased more than 103 million rounds of ammo, an average of about 1,500 bullets per DHS officer. According to Napolitano, DHS had over 263 million rounds of ammunition in its inventory at the end of 2012.

Coupled with a recent nationwide ammunitions shortage, the apparent government stockpiling has sent the conspiracy theory mill into overdrive. As bullets fly off the shelves, Alex Jones has warned his audience that the ammo shortage is a sign that the federal government is gearing up for widespread civic unrest, and engaging in an "arms race against the American people."

That as-yet unfounded fear is underscored by an interesting nationwide trend: A recent poll found that a full 29 percent of Americans—including 44 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents—believe a revolution to protect their liberties might be necessary in the next few years.

If more than a quarter of the population, and nearly half of Republicans, believes that an armed confrontation with the government is imminent—and they are buying up weapons and ammo to prepare for the struggle—then it would only be logical for the federal government, and the Department of Homeland Security in particular, to prepare for this contingency.

But is the US government and the hundreds of billions of dollars of yearly military spending really trying to incite an "arms race" with citizens? Until US citizens start equipping themselves with Predator drones and aircraft carriers, the government will always have the upper hand when it comes to the use of force.

With that in mind, the idea that Homeland Security is trying to buy up all the bullets so civilians can't have any is silly. Who cares how much ammo anti-government citizens buy when they're facing an opposition with the largest budgets on Earth? So while it is true that there are currently off-and-on ammo shortages being reported around the country, Homeland Security purchasing plans (for the future, mind you) aren't to blame.

"Shortages have happened before but this seems to be a little more pronounced," said Mike Bazinet, a spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry lobbying group. "Ammunition manufacturers are working their facilities 24/7 to meet the demand, they are loading them up on trucks and putting them on the shelves, but they are moving very quickly once they get to retailers."

Bazinet dismissed the conspiracy theories, and said that the ammo shortage is primarily attributable to the recent increase in gun sales, a trend documented by the rise in FBI background checks for gun purchases.

“We've obviously seen the reports that the shortage is due to government stockpiling, but they are not accurate,” he said. "Government purchases are not the cause for shortages of retail product.”

But some members of Congress aren't buying it. To that end, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) recently introduced the AMMO Act, which would restrict non-defense agencies from purchasing ammo above the monthly average bought from 2000-2009, before the Obama administration took office. The law would also require the federal government to conduct a report auditing its ammunition purchase and their effect on the retail ammunition supply.

Is this going to be suburban America in five years? Well, no, but all of those bullets have to be used somewhere, right? Via the Defense Department

Inhofe, for one, has suggested that the government stockpiling is a backdoor effort by Democrats to implement gun control measures that couldn't pass the Senate.

"President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights," he said in a press release. "One way the Obama Administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition."

In a recent interview, Lucas was a little more measured. He told me that he wasn't sure why the government needed so much ammunition, but that the perceived government stockpiling was sparking "fear" among average gun owners.

"There is a great suspicion in the countryside," Lucas said. "Part of it is that the actions of this administration have caused so much fear among people that ammunition might not be available in the future."

As a result, he added, “people are stockpiling in a way that they never have before."

MORE THAN A QUARTER OF THE POPULATION, AND NEARLY HALF OF REPUBLICANS, BELIEVES THAT AN ARMED CONFRONTATION WITH THE GOVERNMENT IS IMMINENT.

So far, there is no hard evidence to link the government’s ammo purchases to the rise in conspiratorial right-wing dissent. And obviously, it seems like a stretch to say that the government is in an “arms race” to deprive Americans of bullets.

But as New World Order conspiracy theories increasingly permeate civic life, right-wing conspiracy theorists appear to be taking concrete steps to prepare for what they see as an inevitable showdown, even if those steps often amount to showing off personal arsenals on the web.

What is for certain is that government conspiracy theories are gaining traction. We're already seeing the results of this on a small scale with the sovereign citizen movement, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has recently noted an "explosive growth" of radical antigovernment groups, just to name a couple.

So regardless of whether or not the government is stockpiling ammunition to keep people from revolting, a sizeable portion of the nation thinks that's the case. And now that members of Congress appear to be on board, the sticky conspiracy theory is causing real trouble on Capitol Hill. But rest assured that for the majority of people that "believe" armed confrontation is imminent, actually rounding up a militia to carry it out is a much larger stretch.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

What is it with Police Killing Unarmed People?!?!!?

What the fck is this? First off, why was the child being removed from the home? Because his father smoked some weed. First off, I DO NOT approve of drug use in front of kids. WTF is that? But otherwise, the father sounded reasonably responsible and clearly loved his son whom the biased courts considered safe to put in his care. Further, if we're going to remove children from every home where a parent does a little pot, I hope you have a long list of high quality foster homes on hand. In other words, we have bigger fish to fry.

Secondly, the father "lunged at police with a pen knife." Is that a joke?

First off, a father insults law enforcement which is planning to steal his child (legal stealing, you see). Is that shocking? No. Is it a crime? No, but I'm sure the "authorities" sought to teach that insulting pig a lesson. So the cops show up with guns (note, that is a short to medium range weapon. You can stand back a ways and still stop someone with a shot), and then panic because the man supposedly pulls a PEN KNIFE!?!?!?

Its probably a what, 2 inch blade? Please Google the term "pen knife" dear reader. And prepare to laugh. Against a FIREARM a pen knife is about as good as a wad of spit. And if someone did in fact pull one, you'd have all the time in the world to deter him by pulling a gun. No one with a brain tries to knife someone holding a gun.

I'm especially curious because this is not the first time I've heard of a suspicious police shooting being justified by the police with "he lunged at us with a knife." How do you prove that? If the man had a pocket knife in his pants, the police could just say he "lunged at them," whether he did or not.

Further they were terrified enough to shoot him dead. Based on a supposed "lunge" with a 2 inch blade?

THE POLICE OVERREACTED. Its nearly impossible to kill someone with a 'pen knife.' Its a tiny knife not designed to assault anyone.

Picture the social services folks showing up to your house to take your child away. OVERREACTION is easy! And rather expected! My sweet little old mom would throw an outburst. If the man did come at the GUN-WEARING cops with a gun, why didn't they just wound him? Hey, policeman, EVER HEARD OF SHOOTING SOMEONE IN THE LEG?!!?

Jesus Christ, now this man is DEAD. A parent, a father, DEAD.

Way to go, Michigan State police and DHS. Not surprised this was done in ultra-liberal, state-employs-stazi Michigan.

By Frank Michels, Design Editor

2:09 p.m. EDT, March 16, 2012

GRAYLNG — The fatal shooting of William Reddie, 32, by a Crawford County Sheriff’s Department deputy during the “emergency removal” of his 2-year-old son from an apartment they shared has many of his friends crying foul.

A Michigan State Police probe has concluded the shooting was justified because Reddie had a pocketknife and lunged at police.

“I can’t believe they (police) could not subdue Will without killing him, and over what, marijuana,” said Joanne Michal, who knew Reddie for half of his life. “Why didn’t police just arrest him or cite him for marijuana instead of removing his child?”

Workers from the Department of Human Services along with the sheriff’s deputy and an officer from the Grayling City Police went to Reddie’s apartment with a court order to remove the minor child because Reddie had allegedly smoked marijuana in the presence of his son. Reddie was agitated and had allegedly threatened police when confronted with the marijuana accusation earlier in the day on Feb. 3.

The court order of Feb. 3, obtained by the Herald Times pursuant to a Freedom of Information request, indicated the minor child’s removal from Reddie’s custody for the following reason: “There are reasonable grounds for this court to remove the child(ren) from the parent ... because conditions or surroundings of the child(ren), and is contrary to the welfare of the child(ren) to remain in the home because: It is alleged that the father used marijuana in the home in the presence of the child. In addition, there is concern for the safety of the child due to a
domestic disturbance and threats made toward law enforcement by the father.”

A Feb. 3 press release from the sheriff’s department alleged that Reddie had lunged at police and social workers with a knife and the deputy “contained” the situation by shooting Reddie with a revolver.

Reddie died within seconds in his apartment around 4:41 p.m. Feb. 3 after being shot in the chest at close range, according to his death certificate obtained by the Herald Times.

Reddie, who had physical custody of his son, had petitioned the court for permanent custody and a hearing on that petition was scheduled for Monday, Feb. 6.

A resident of the apartment complex, who lived across the parking lot from Reddie, said he saw police go into the apartment and within a few minutes he heard gun shots.

“I heard two shots,” said Brian Jackson. “A friend who lives in the building heard the shots and ran into the hall to see two young children run out. He said Reddie was face down on the floor.”

A state police report said only one shot was fired.

While Michal doesn’t know exactly what happened inside Reddie’s apartment during the shooting, it should have ended differently, she said.

“It is particularly sad that Will was shot to death right in front of his son,” she said. “I was married to a 30-year infantry man and my son is a sharpshooter in the Army. You never take your gun out of the holster unless you’re ready to use it. Why not use a Taser? Even if he (Will) had a knife and lunged at police, they didn’t have to kill him. Instead of using a Taser, you shoot him in front of his child. It is just totally unjustified. They didn’t have to kill him. I think it’s very sad that his life was taken during the removal of his son. And the smell of marijuana shouldn’t have been a reason for an emergency order.

“Just a few days before he was killed, Will was visiting, and he was so excited because a hearing was coming up for custody (of his son),” Michal continued. “And it seemed to give him hope of getting permanent custody. His son was everything to him.”

Michal said she often saw Reddie with his son, although he didn’t like working while he had his son.

Michal had known Reddie since he was a teenager.

“My husband (now deceased) had known Will, and he introduced me to him. Since he was a teenager he’s always done odd jobs around the house and yard.”

Balkis Shippy, another friend of Reddie’s who knew him since he was a teenager, said she still can’t believe it. Shippy, who has lived in Grayling since the early 1970s, said she first knew Reddie’s mother from working with her at the Grayling Big Boy.

Later, Reddie would become friends with Balkis and her husband, Fred.

“He would do odd jobs for us from time to time, and he was always helpful,” she said. “I can’t believe this kid is gone. He was very nice and he was always polite.”

She said Reddie’s son is “just a beautiful little boy. I would see him (Reddie) with his son going back and forth, and he always talked about his son and how some day he would be getting full custody.”

Crawford County Clerk Sandra Moore said she also knew Reddie.

“It’s truly a shame,”Moore said. “He was a good guy and very fond of his son. He had been very excited just days before” about the possibility of getting permanent custody on Feb. 6.

According to court records, the child is now in a foster care home and his future remains uncertain.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

It Must Be Because Women are Discriminated Against in the Workplace

of course its stated that men are "less willing" to leave home. Sure, right.

via marketwatch:

As more adults decide to live with mom and dad, young men appear to be less willing to fly the nest than women, a new study finds. This, experts say, could be an early sign of larger economic problems.

Millions of young Americans are living at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The number of “millennials” -- adults aged 18 to 31-- living at home rose to 36% last year. That represented the highest percentage in the last four decades, and a significant increase from 32% just five years earlier. In 2012, 56% of adults aged 18 to 24 lived in their parental home, Pew found, as did 16% of adults aged 25 to 31. However, millennial males (40%) were significantly more likely than millennial females (32%) to live with mom and dad.

There are some demographic reasons for the gender gap. On average, men tend to marry later than women, says Zhenchao Qian, chair of sociology at Ohio State University. “There are more single young men than women out there,” he says. “This gives unmarried men more time to live with their parents.” Men marry at around 29 years of age, approximately two years older than the average for women, and both sexes are marrying around two years later in life than two decades ago, according to a 2012 survey by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research in Ohio.

Click to Play

Is Generation Y Holding Back the Housing Recovery?

Millions of young Americans are unemployed or underemployed, living with roommates or at home with Mom and Dad — instead of buying homes of their own, a new study found. Quentin Fottrell reports. Photo: Getty Images.

Perhaps a more controversial theory: Sons may also have an easier time at home. Even in 2013, parents expect their sons to do less housework than their daughters, Qian says. “Parents give their sons more freedom than their daughters,” says Kit Yarrow, chair of the psychology department at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, Calif. and co-author of “Gen Y.” For Americans aged 18 to 24, “it’s easier for a young man to live at home and still feel independent than it would be for a young woman,” she says. An even less flattering reason: “Women tend to mature, emotionally, faster than men.”

Also see: 10 things Generation Y won’t tell you.

But there are more worrying factors in play than a taste for the comforts of home, says John Bonini, content marketing manager of Impact Branding & Design in Wallingford, Conn., who regularly carries out research on millennials. Women have consistently outnumbered men when it comes to college enrollment, he says. “Since the economic downturn, with many state and local governments cutting spending, and manual labor jobs doing the same, it would make sense that those with college degrees would see a greater chance of gaining employment than those without one.” Many young men, he says, are getting left behind.

Young women tend to outperform men in post-secondary education. Some 71.3% of female high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college versus 61.3% of males, according to the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The former also appear to be better students. “Females tend to finish college faster than males,” according to the Pew report. What’s more, men who had earned bachelor’s degrees in 2011 had an unemployment rate of 16.1% in October 2011, compared with 11.2% among females, a separate Bureau of Labor Statistics report found.

Regardless of sex, children living at home longer put a bigger financial burden on their parents and the economy. Hosting a son or daughter after 18 can cost $8,000 to $18,000 a year, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal. And the fact that around 22.6 million young adults are still living at home also means there are fewer renters and potential buyers of first-time homes in the property market. Only 450,000 new households are being created annually versus 1.1 million before the recession, according to real-estate marketplace Trulia; 18- to 34-year-olds make up half of that demand.

See more: “The kids aren’t buying homes.”

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Salon: Man-Hating Central

Ah, Salon. You can always count on them for a good dose of man-hating bias.

SURPRISE! SALON.COM STIGMATIZES FATHERS AND MARRIAGE

July 29, 2013 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

One of the key elements influencing the decline of marriage and the marginalization of men in families has always been their description in the mass communications media and popular culture. Mostly, those depictions are both shockingly anti-father and factually inaccurate. The feminist song has been, at least since the 1960s, that men are a danger to women and their children, so the two are better off without them. Just why the various communications media have so unquestioningly sung the same refrain, despite its patent inaccuracy is one to ponder. But whatever the answer to that question might be, one common way the choir keeps singing is to simply leave out the male voices. After all, it’s a lot easier to denigrate men in their absence, and to allow them to speak might suggest that they’re human beings with wants, needs, vulnerabilities, strengths and legitimate grievances. And we can’t have that, now can we.

The reliably anti-father Salon.com is always good for an example of the above, as here(Salon.com, 7/27/13). The piece is written by one Jennifer M. Silva who gets things off with a bang by quoting approvingly Lillian Rubin who, in 1976, defined what women and men get out of marriage and parenthood.

For her, the realization of her womanhood—a home and family of her own. For him, the fulfillment of his manhood—a wife to care for him, sons to emulate him, and daughters to adore him.

Stated another way, “women good, men bad, very bad.” I don’t know the state of social science in 1976 regarding mothers and fathers and what they seek in marriage, but I know what it is now, and, to put it mildly, that’s not it. I can excuse Rubin, but Silva’s ignorant misandry is contemptible.

I suppose it’s worth noting that Silva reaches back 37 years for her source. It’s too bad she didn’t consult more recent studies of men and fatherhood. Of course if she had, she’d have had to admit that they compare not a bit to Rubin’s condescending view and that, I suspect, is the point. Silva didn’t want to describe men accurately for to do so would have been inconvenient to her thesis.

The simple fact is that, as countless studies show, men don’t want “a wife to care for him, sons to emulate him, and daughters to adore him.” On the contrary, they seek the usual male role of provider and protector. Rubin and Silva’s man is all take and no give. The reality is mostly the opposite.

For example, read the excellent work of Kathryn Edin, Harvard professor of management and policy, who for years now has studied the youngest and poorest of fathers, i.e. teenagers of the lowest economic strata. Her description of those young men – boys actually – bears no resemblance to Rubin’s. Here’s an excerpt from an article about a speech Edin gave on the subject.

"Andre (a teen-age father) was no 'hit-and-run' father, making children as symbols of their sexual prowess," she said. "He was not yet out of high school, but he insisted that he will always be there for his daughter because he always wanted a child."

Many of the men surveyed viewed fatherhood as an act of bravery, Eden said, because they live in a crime-ridden area. The same year Green learned of his ex-girlfriend's pregnancy, for example, several violent homicides and robberies occurred in his neighborhood. One of these crimes was a double murder of a Vietnamese couple by a burglar who then took the couple's infant daughter hostage in a standoff with police.

"Fathers like Andre embrace fatherhood because raising a baby would seem heroic in contrast to the negativity around them," Edin said.

Several men described their children as "saints" or "redeemers," Edin said. Many of those surveyed said they would have continued to be involved with drugs and crime if not for their children. Some were incarcerated at the time they learned that they were going to be fathers.

Edin also found that low-income men set their own standards for good parenting, which may differ from those of society as a whole. She said many choose to focus on the non-financial aspects of fatherhood, including teaching their daughters about having relationships with men and their sons how to fight.

Hmm. Those young men don’t look much like Rubin’s description, do they? And of course they’re the youngest and poorest of dads, the ones who live in the worst neighborhoods and navigate the most treacherous waters to adulthood. Needless to say, other fathers, like those described by Sanford Braver, Ross Parke and Armin Brott, and countless others are much the same.

Reading Rubin and Silva, you’d never guess that between 25% and 75% of fathers experience couvade symptoms, i.e. symptoms of their partners during pregnancy. Nor would you know that, during their partner’s pregnancies, as Parke and Brott report, ”men show and increased interest in babies,” “start reading books about children and parenting,” or take second jobs to support the new arrival. Yes, newborns form attachment bonds with their fathers as strong as those with their mothers, but you’ll never hear it from Rubin or Silva.

Indeed, married men with children find those dual roles of husband and father, protector and provider to be as important and powerful as any they’ll ever take on. That’s one reason why the rate of suicide for men, but not women, shoots up in the event of divorce. Overwhelmingly, when they divorce, men lose their children, but women don’t and the summary destruction of those roles in turn destroys the father’s reason to live. But again, these inconvenient truths don’t interest either Rubin or Silva.

What does interest Silva is her interview with a 30-year-old woman of contemporary America whom she names Allie. Allie and boyfriend Jake got married and later divorced. Here’s Allie’s description of the big moment when Jake proposed.

We were at my parents’ house and he came downstairs and said, “Close your eyes, I have a surprise for you.” I was thinking he had candy or something. I probably would have been more excited about that. I could feel him in my face, like, “why are you so close to me?” and when I opened my eyes he was down on one knee with the ring. And I kind of, my heart sank, like this wasn’t special. . . . I’m in my pajamas and I look like hell. So you know I acted surprised but I was so disappointed and I felt horrible that I felt disappointed.

Silva’s goal in her article is, among other things, to prove that there’s a conflict between newly “liberated” women and marriage. The problem is that her poster child for her thesis is someone who (a) has never been interested in marriage and (b) apparently has the maturity level of a high school freshman. Face it, when a woman’s been together with a man for a good while and he gets down on bended knee, with an engagement ring in his hand and a proposal on his lips, and all she cares about is how she’s dressed, she’s not a good candidate for any endeavor that requires even slight emotional maturity. Allie herself admits as much.

Reflecting on their divorce, Allie sighed: “I feel like I am eighteen playing in the adult world.”

If you’re writing an article about the merits and demerits of marriage, she’s also not a good candidate to help you make your points. But again, Silva’s not trying to be even-handed; she’s trying to convince her readers that marriage and the modern world aren’t compatible, so, with that dubious goal in mind, she does the best she can. And that means hanging her hat on a young woman who has no comprehension of what a stable, married relationship can mean, not only to the partners, but to their children.

Given all that, are we surprised to learn that, despite Silva’s dedication of well over a thousand words to Allie, Jake never gets a word in? That’s right, although she could probably have asked Allie for Jake’s phone number and gotten a nice long interview with him, Silva didn’t make the effort. What would Jake have said about his desire for a life’s partner and children? We’ll never know because, as usual, when the subject is marriage and children, men and fathers aren’t allowed a voice by those who write about them.

And of course, having denied Jake any say in what she says about him, Silva is free to conclude what she always wanted to.

[H]e yearned for “a wife to care for him, sons to emulate him, and daughters to adore him”

Or he didn’t. We’ll never know, because Silva never asked.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Abortion - Its Come. To. This.

This is why they are doctors and not lawyers.

"Abortion is the same as killing, so instead of stopping abortion, we should allow for more killing."

I regard abortion as a necessarily evil, ONLY because unwanted children often grow up in squalor, become mentally and emotionally unstable, and lead a life of crime and destitution. Abortion ONLY IN CASES OF EMERGENCY - meaning you CAN NOT afford the child and will go homeless and hungry if you have him/her - does not seem out of line to me. The poor are poor enough as it is.

That said, abortion has COMPLETELY turned into a form of birth control and it is OUT OF CONTROL, just as underage sex, being had by veritable children, is.

The article below is a SIGN OF THE TIMES. Abortion on a LIVING BABY? Do you know that many people who are anti-abortion are so because they have seen live deliveries MURDERED (yes, that's what it is). Ron Paul for instance once explained that he had seen a baby with a heartbeat and breathing KILLED by another physician as part of an "abortion." As Ron put it, wait a second, that, my friends, IS MURDER.

This has gone far enough. Enough is enough.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.

They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'

He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."

The Fog of War

Bear in mind these are just soldiers trying to do their jobs.

And when you are being shot at daily, and burying friends, a lot of things that are not weapons sure start to look like weapons.

All of these people seem to be civilians. Two were Reuters reporters. Family men.

They were all killed.

Monday, July 29, 2013

The 2013 woman: I Want to Stay Home and Have Kids

FEMINISTS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

Don't let those misogynists keep you home against your will!

We can't compromise

Posted by Meredith Goldstein July 29, 2013 08:33 AM

Q:Hi Meredith,

I have been seeing my boyfriend for almost two years. We are both in our mid-to-late 20s and have been living together for about a year. I love my boyfriend and in some ways can easily see marrying him. He's fun, funny, loves his job, and really wants to build a life together. However, I ran into an ex recently, and it's made me question things.

My relationship with my boyfriend, I'll call him B, has gone through some ups and downs over the past year due to different desires for our futures, which are heavily influenced by our upbringings. His family went through some tough times financially, both of his parents worked, and as a result, B has a kind of chip on his shoulder about people with money. It's actually caused some contention between him and my parents, so that's not a great relationship. He was raised in a house where swearing was allowed; it wasn't in mine. B also just generally hates getting together with his family, whereas I am freakishly close with mine. As much as B dislikes his family get-togethers, he envisions a similar life for himself. He wants a small house in the town where he grew up, wants to be able to swear at the TV in front of his kids, and expects that both parents will work to support the family. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what he wants, but I'm not sure I see all of it for me. We try to compromise when we talk about future things, but lately it's been a lot of "no" from B.

For example, a bunch of my female coworkers had babies this year and almost all of them want to stay home and be the at-home mom now.

I mentioned this to B, telling him how my mom loved staying home to raise us and how I think I might want to try it, at least for a year.

Another couple we know had kids and the wife left teaching for 10 years and then returned, so I figure it is possible to do.

B's response was a flat, "No, we won't be able to afford it. Both my parents worked, you'll be fine."

A few weeks later I was out with some friends when I ran into an ex-boyfriend from graduate school -- I'll call him G. G and I broke up due to busy schedules, but we were really on the same page in terms of personalities, life desires, etc. We grew up a town apart, were both raised by stay-at-home moms, are the same religion, have the same sense of humor, etc. We caught up quickly, and when I got home I had an email from him saying that he wants me to be happy with B, but he knows that he can make me happy too and if I'm ever available he will be there. I know that with G, I will be able to have the life I envision, but that shouldn't be the determining factor in a relationship. It should be the person.

I've tried to discuss this with B, but his answer is always "we'll deal with it when the time comes." I just feel like there are all these not-quite issues yet that will blow up one day. Any advice would be great!

– Teacher Without an Answer, Boston

A:The philosophical differences in this relationship don't bother me very much. What bothers me is how B deals. He can't just say no and expect you to follow his lead. That's not going to work.
You need to be with someone who will talk this stuff out instead of shutting you down. Sometimes it's cheaper to stay home with a kid, right? Is his objection to stay-at-home parenting just about the money -- or does he need to be with someone who prioritizes work as much as he does?
I know it's difficult, but you have to forget about G for the moment. You live with your boyfriend, and G is just a distraction. Spend your energy asking B whether he really sees the two of you working as a couple in the future. You both want a certain kind of life and there's no "dealing with it when the time comes." This is why we date -- to figure out how a long-term relationship with someone might work.

And for the record, choosing a partner isn't just about picking a specific person. It is about choosing a life. If you and B simply want different things, it's OK to walk away.
Readers? Is G a factor in this decision? What do we think of B’s negotiating skills? Is there a future here? Discuss.